Wednesday, August 11 1999

http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/clip.cgi?item=5

Arizona Daily Star --- azstarnet.com

Paraguay's `terror archives' detail how juntas united in war on left

© 1999 The New York Times
ASUNCION, Paraguay - When Martin Almada asked a judge for records of his arrest under the dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, he hoped merely to learn more about his own private tragedy. He spent nearly four years in captivity, during which police telephoned his wife so she would hear his screams under torture.
Instead, Almada, a one-time teacher, and the judge unearthed a mountain of records detailing repression by U.S.-backed military regimes throughout South America during the Cold War.
From floor to ceiling, 5 tons of reports and photos detail the arrest, interrogation and disappearance of thousands of political prisoners during Stroessner's 35-year dictatorship.
The documents trace the creation and work of Operation Condor, a secret plan among security forces in six countries to crush left-wing dissent.
Paraguayans quickly nicknamed the files the ``archives of terror.''
Though discovered in 1992, the files have gained new prominence throughout Latin America with the arrest of Chile's former dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, in London last October. To this day, they remain the only extensive collection of public records of a project by the region's military rulers that succeeded in exterminating thousands of political opponents, many of whom had sought sanctuary in one another's countries.
The files have given a kind of vindication to survivors, their families and the families of those dead and missing, by delivering concrete proof of a secretive era that might otherwise be lost.
The archives have also provided fodder for the developing case against Pinochet, the only one of the region's dictators to face the prospect of trial. Stroessner remains a fugitive in Brazil.
Intelligence sharing between Washington's allies in South America did not begin with Operation Condor, but the plan formalized and deepened cooperation among police and military forces that had taken power in six countries - Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia.
The officials, many trained during the Cold War at the U.S.-run School of the Americas, viewed their enemy as communism, backed by Moscow in a subversive war without frontiers. To prevail, governments, too, would have to work across borders, they said.
The security threats were not entirely imagined. Armed rebels like the Montoneros in Argentina did aim to destabilize some governments. But in other countries there were no rebel movements, and military regimes used the club of anti-communism to snuff out any calls for democracy or labor rights.


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